Google Maps Updated Part 2

Google Maps recently updated its satellite imagery of our property and, interestingly, the new images seem to be chronologically earlier than the previous shots. I'm wondering if Google will make time and date stamps publicly available at some point. Anyway, the nice thing is that they added another level of magnification and the ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms) are visible piled up in what is now the back of our main house. You can also see the concrete block foundation of our garage apartment. Again, this indicates a time period prior to the last set of Google satellite images which showed the garage framing already underway and the ICFs in place as the basement walls of the main house.

Snow Came Early

We usually don't get any snow until after the new year, but we got a good 4-6 inches on December 18th and Collinsville Road right in front of our house was particularly treacherous. The ice pellets and freezing rain did make for some good sledding though! We'll see if there's any more in store for us this winter.



The chickens (including some new pullets) didn't care for cold feet and stuck mainly to a few paths that we shoveled clear for them so they could travel from coop to shelter and back. Needless to say, the days following the snowfall were a muddy mess. The good news is that egg production is picking up again after a long moult, and we are now getting around a dozen a day.

Google Maps Updated

Looks like Google finally updated their satellite photography and our house is now "on the map." Interestingly, this is not a recent photo as indicated by the lack of circle driveway, various piles of construction material and dumpster. Anyway, now you can see the placement of the house and garage in relation to the property. Enjoy!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Had to jump on the bandwagon and set up a Twitter account for Blue Harvest Farm. Twitter is a microblog limited to 140 characters or less per "tweet" (post), so it's not replacing this blog, just supplementing it. The nice thing about Twitter is that it allows us to post more often. You can follow us at www.twitter.com/blueharvestfarm and we'll also show the most recent posts on this page in the lefthand column under "Twitter Feed."

In Like a Lion...

It's interesting that some of the heaviest snow in this area seems to come late in the winter. We finally got some decent snow---about 4-5 inches of very fluffy white stuff---and had an official snow day complete with downhill sledding, snowball fights and tauntaun building.

The Missing Dozen

Yesterday, All Bright Sanitation (828.894.5009) came to swap out the big yellow construction dumpsters. Despite the treacherous nature of giant machines lifting and pushing a 22-foot-long steel container filled with a ton of debris, 12 delicate eggs were found unscathed in a small nest beneath the dumpster. A little backstory: Checkers, the only hen of our three hatchlings from last July, seems to be following in the footsteps of Gloria, our Araucana "Houdini". Checkers has been consistently jumping the 4-foot-tall chicken wire fencing of the new chicken run. We found it futile to put her back in, so we let her explore the new grounds on her own despite the dangers of being a lone wandering hen. Since she is the youngest Araucana, we can distinguish her eggs because they are smaller than normal and blue-green. We found one of her eggs near the edge of the forementioned dumpster a while back, but didn't realize she had continued to lay them further under, where we couldn't see them. This morning, Checkers let herself out, as usual, and was wandering around the exact spot where the dumpster (and her dozen eggs) were located just 24 hours earlier. Poor girl didn't know what to do so she ended up just laying today's egg in the grass. While the eggs may still be good, they may have been damaged due to recent freezing temperatures so we're giving them to the dogs---not our customers. :-)

Garage Move-In

This past weekend, we acclimated ourselves to the new sounds and new smells of a new structure as we moved into the garage apartment. Bathroom and foyer tile have been laid and floated but still need to be sealed. Some spots on the wall are uneven and need to be repainted. The kitchen cabinets and microwave need to be lowered a few inches. The stairs need to be sanded and stained. While there's still much to be done, the loft-style garage apartment is now complete enough for the whole family (including the dogs) to actually live at the site. Sunday was spent relocating our egg-laying friends. We picked up 150 feet of chicken wire to create a large open run behind the garage.

Fortunately, our original coop design was portable enough to bring to the new property (with the help of our landlord's Ford pickup truck). At dusk, we boxed up the first batch of chickens and brought them to their new home. Despite the low four-foot-tall fence, we'll try to hold off on free-ranging until they are familiar with the new location and/or we get our new super-portable hotwire fencing solution set up (more on that later). The upshot of the move is that we can now bring our Rose Cottage lease to an end and start applying that monthly payment toward something else, like the new car.

License and Registration, Please

The commute from Columbus to Charlotte is brutal. Google Maps says 105 miles...each way. That's almost four hours of "me" time in the car five days a week, and about 54,600 miles per year. I know, ridiculous. Factor in fuel (even though prices have dropped to about $1.60 per gallon) and it's ludicrous. Can you tell how committed I am to farm and family? So, I woke up a bit later than usual this morning and was trying to make up some time on the Highway 74 near Mill Spring when I saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror of my rental 2008 Mazda 6. I switched lanes, but when the State Trooper mimicked my maneuver I knew I'd been busted. The trooper said he clocked me doing 80 in a 65, and seemed rightfully surprised when he found out I was commuting to Charlotte. My punishment was a $151 speeding ticket, and I can't wait to see how this might affect my insurance, which has quadrupled already due to the longer daily commute. Yea!

"Geeeeetttt Ouuuuuutttttttt...."

After three days of no water at Rose Cottage, the landlord had the well pump replaced. Not only was the initial service man a bit slow getting out to respond, but it turns out he was not really a well specialist. The result? Water came back on, but was so terribly discolored that we didn't dare use it anyway. It began to clear up a little bit, but then the water stopped once again on the following Friday. Something wasn't installed correctly and the new pump burnt out. So, we suffered another few days without water and ended up bathing at our new garage apartment despite not actually having a certificate of occupancy. It was weird. We felt like squatters in our own house! We recommended Pittman Well Boring to our landlord; this was the company we used for our own well at the construction site and were pleased with their work. They came to our rescue pretty quickly and installed another new pump (same model we went with actually) but, because it was an old well, we ended up having more discolored water due to the rust and corroded metals (so they say).

Seeing such dirty water coming from the pipes is a disturbing image...as if this possessed old cottage was trying to get us to move out faster. Believe us, we're trying!

Let There Be Light

Electric is all hooked up at this point on the garage, but there are still some wiring issues that are causing breakers to flip when certain switches are turned on. This should be addressed prior to our move-in, which we are hoping is within a week at this point. We picked out barn-style lamps for the front of the garage with a single metal halide lamp at the top in case we ever need to be working out front after dark or the kids want to practice their 3-pointers with our non-existent basketball hoop. We've also got dusk 'til dawn motion-activated security flood lights at the back corners of the house, although the angles need some adjusting at this point.

Circle Drive

The days of contractors getting mired in the slick red mud are finally over. The circular driveway was graded and crush and run was laid down to create a more definitive driveway. The circle has a 70-foot-diameter, the exact distance required by delivery trucks to ease with co-op or feed drop-offs. We'd like to widen it just a bit more on the side nearest the garage, and eventually we'll get higher-grade gravel put down. We're thinking about what to put in the center of the circle...a small garden? Decorative vegetation? A large rock? Here's a couple of progress shots:





We also had them grade and lay down some gravel on the west side of the garage to create a parking pad. The garage is full of our stuff from the ongoing move so it will be a while before a car actually gets parked in there!

Remembering Sasha

Last night, Sasha the chihuahua passed away from congestive heart failure. Sasha was a surprise gift from us to Danna (Dionne's mom) in 1996. I remember the look of shock on Danna's face when we first told her we had a "Mother's Day surprise" for her---she thought we were going to say we were pregnant! And like a new child, Sasha always received royal treatment; she wore sweaters in the wintertime, ate her share of hamburgers, had her feet wiped after walking in wet grass and was granted the right to sleep on the bed inside her very own pillowcase. I used to carry Sasha around in my pocket when she was little (granted I wore some pretty baggy shorts in '96), but Sasha never let the big dogs boss her around, despite being the runt of her litter. She is pictured here in a photo from Thanksgiving 2007. Good dog.

The Importance of Water

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface and yet it remains a precious resource, especially when you're not on the city water system. When I returned home to Rose Cottage last night, Dionne sent me right back out into the cold night to find out why we had no water pressure. We thought we heard a "running water" sound, which might have meant a broken pipe, but it turned out to be the water boiling in the water heater because it wasn't refilling. Armed with flashlights, FRS radios, and our winter coats, we determined that the well pump had quit working causing water pressure to drop at both our cottage and the neighboring rental house. After resetting the electrical breakers and finding no apparent leaky pipes, we went ahead and alerted our landlord who called his plumber (personally, I think it's a mechanical well pump issue vs. a "plumbing" problem). It's only a matter of time before the clothes in the washing machine sour, the unflushed toilet stench overwhelms us, the dirty dishes fill the sink and my coworkers take notice of an unusual amount of mousse in my unwashed hair. Fortunately, the kids were just bathed and we had enough bottled drinking water to make it through the night (we don't trust well water from the tap). On a side note, the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was wash my hands in the company bathroom and it felt wonderful.

Flurries

Dionne e-mailed me this afternoon to report some flurries of snow. Can you tell we're excited for winter? That is all.

It's Time to Take Out the Garbage

Living in suburbia, weekly trash pickup is a part of life. Your refuse goes from the table to the kitchen or bathroom waste receptacle. Then it gets transferred to a larger container in your garage or just outside. Then it's dragged or rolled to the curb once a week either the night before or, somewhat more grumpily, the morning of city trash pickup. Well-paid guys in coveralls drive a noisy truck down the street, empty your trash can into the vehicle with careless abandon, and your unwanted by-products are never heard from again. While you might think I'm about to lecture you about the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), this is actually a post about trash disposal in the country. As city folk know, trash service is usually bundled with your water or utility bill. Of course, when your water comes from a well, you don't have a water bill so residential pickup service is $16.50/month (billed quarterly). The good news is that there doesn't appear to be any additional cost to come all the way down our 1200-foot driveway for "curbside" pickup. More good news, recycling is also available. The only caveat is that recyclables need to be placed in clear plastic or blue bags to distinguish them from non-recyclables. These services, incidentally, are provided by All Bright Sanitation---the same company that is providing our gigantic dumpsters during construction.

Cold and Getting Colder

The leaves have dropped and we had some nice color this year. The shorts and sandals are packed away and jackets and knit hats are once again hung by the door. The Farmer's Almanac (using their 200-year-old secret formula) seems to predict a wet, snowy winter. Sure enough, we've got snowfall in the nearby mountains already, but, as we live in the foothills, the weather is usually a bit milder for us. I am looking forward to some sledding with the kids this year in our backyard.

We've stripped down the original chicken coop to rearrange some roosting branches and nesting boxes. We've also removed a deteriorating bedsheet which was used as a layer of insulation. With a red heat lamp and the existing bubble-foil-bubble and tarp, we think we're good to go.

LOST: Pet Deer

On the way out of local Ingles grocery store, I came across an interesting "lost pet" flyer on the neighborhood cork board. While lost dogs, cats and even birds would not have surprised me, I didn't suspect a lost deer sign. The proposition of a young pet fawn (that sleeps on a bed no less) was one that left me somewhat giddy despite the obvious impracticalities. Ah...living in the country opens up so many new possibilities.

Replenishing the Flock

Paid a visit to Foothills Alpacas and picked up 11 Plymouth Barred Rock pullets and one Rhode Island Red this weekend to replace some of the hens we've lost over the past year.

These new birds will be kept separated from the rest of the chickens until they mature a bit more. They are too young to compete with the larger chickens for food and we worry about free-ranging them at the rental cottage for such a short time---might as well get them on the new Collinsville Road property.

Using mostly existing materials from previous coop construction, we made another smaller hoop house and fenced off the back section of the run (which isn't used by our free-ranging older birds.


Apart from the one Barred Rock with a deformed foot and the singular Red, we can't tell any of them apart... but the kids can!

The kids have begun the usual process of naming them which means we won't be eating them.

Countdown Complete?

If you've been watching our blog, perhaps you've been eagerly watching the Construction Progress countdown in our lefthand menu. Now it reads "Countdown Complete" as we've passed September 15th. Unfortunately, due to the change in builders a while back, we've missed that deadline and are hoping to be in the garage apartment by mid-October. As of today, we still need to finish up the drywall, get a well pump, install garage doors, lay down flooring, pour the parking pad, construct the stoop and paint---not to mention acquiring appliances and fixtures! We're looking into Sears Outlet for some good deals on scratch and dent or overstock items.

Gas Crisis

During the construction of our new home, I've been commuting from Charlotte to the homesite each weekend. It's a respectable drive and one that I'm not particularly fond of. To make matters worse, the current gas crisis makes the weekly trek an expensive one. While I was born in the 1970s, I've never witnessed this absurdity in my adult life. Last night, for example, I drove around two states (I live near the NC/SC border) looking for gas and was able to find it in only three places, all of which had ridiculously long lines. Even the local Sam's Club ran dry. Prices are hovering around $4 per gallon in Charlotte, if you can find gas at all. Many stations are simply out of fuel, and sometimes lines form at gas stations that are expecting to have a fuel delivery. To combat the madness, I've been carpooling to work during the week with a coworker who happens to live the same apartment complex. On a related note, I've rented an economy car until our mortgage is approved and I can buy a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. Needless to say, we are not driving the 14/16 mpg Suburban much.